Preserving Preservationism: A Reply to Lackey

Abstract

In her essay Memory as a Generative Epistemic Source,l Jennifer Lackey argues that, contrary to a common viewpoint, men10ry can gener­ ate rationality, justification, and even knowledge. In this paper, I will critically evaluate the case she makes for memory's epistemically genera­ tive abilities and find it wanting. In particular, I will argue that her alleged counterexamples are not compelling and can reasonably be resis­ ted by her opponent. More importantly, I will argue that even if her examples show the principle against which they are aimed to be false, she has nevertheless not shown that memory is a generative epistemic source. Before evaluating Lackey's examples, I should mention that there is a section of Lackey's paper that I will not be addressing. In section 4, she argues that memorycan be epistemically generative because it can produce new beliefs. F or example, it is plausible to think we often take in more vis­ ual inforn1ation than we process into doxastic states. At a later time, we may recall past visual experiences and come to form new, justified beliefs based on them. There is an obvious sense in which n1emory functions gen­ eratively here, and I have no wish to deny the obvious. However, since such examples are also instances of beliefgeneration, they are very much unlike the main examples in her paper. The main sections of her paper, and the ones with which I shall be taking issue, are intended to show that memory can be epistemically generative even when it is not doxastically